My apologies, Julia.

One option for some dishes is to cut in half, scoop out the seeds, roast, and scoop out the squash to use in whatever you're making. If you're peeling and cutting before cooking, a slightly serrated peeler works well.

Syronai-I'm thinking a machete would have been more appropriate! It definitely had some green in it. I'm grateful for the information though and I know for next time. Thankfully, the slow cooker made it taste ripe!

Also: machetes work well. Just sayin'.

Look around the stem end. If it has a lot of green streaks there, it's not ripe. The deeper the tan/orange color all over the squash, the riper it is. You don't want to see much or any green at all. Also look for weeping beads of sap-like liquid near the stem. The more of that you see, the riper it is (usually).

As for cutting it in half, use your sharpest large chef's knife, start it one-handed, keep it on a steady surface, and apply pressure with both hands flat on top of the blade. Sometimes a little rocking will make it go through. But if you're having really serious trouble, it isn't ripe. Seems a little early in the season for butternuts to me anyway, but our growing season here in Washington has been delayed by about 4-6 weeks this year.

I began by trying to cut the squash in half to make it more manageable...but I could barely get the knife through it! I had to use such force to make it go through.

I truly don't know if it was ripe enough. How can you tell if it's ripe?

1) Cut the butternut squash in half where the chimney of it ends and the bulb begins
2) Cut off the stem end of the chimney and set it upright on your cutting board. With a sharp large knife, carefully slice down the length of the chimney towards the cutting board, skinning the squash. Turn as you go, all the way around.
3) Once the skin is off the chimney, cut it in large slabs lengthwise, about 3-4 depending on the width of the squash. Slice each of these into long 1" or so strips. Chop across the other way to form cubes or small rectangles.
4) Cut the bulb in half and scoop out both reserves of seeds.
5) Chop off the stem end and hold it upright on the cutting board much the same way you did the chimney. This takes more practice as the bulb is a strange shape.
6) Slice into long strips and chop across the other way as you did the chimney.

Also: wear plastic gloves as you do this to prevent the sticky weeping of the squash to bead up on your hands. OR, just get all sticky as you go and then rub olive oil on your hands, wash them really well with soap and hot water, and rub a bit more olive oil on. That usually gets off a large bit of the stickiness.

I usually rest the squash on it's side and slice the bottom end and stem end off. Then I peel it with a veggie peeler (works for butternut, but not all winter squash), stand it up on it's bottom end (which is now flat and pretty stable), and cut it in half vertically. Scoop out the seeds, then cut as desired keeping a flat side on the cutting board. I'm curious to hear what others do.